Comment by avianlyric

> So cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space. Simply because all the waste energy created by people living in the space reduces the total heating requirement of the space, but equally increases the cooling requirement of that same space.

This simply is not true for a furnace or electric resistive heat.

My furnace produces 0.9W of heat for every 1W of energy input. More efficient ones do 0.98, the best you get with electric resistive heat is 1W.

On the other hand my air conditioner moves 3.5W of heat outside for every 1W of energy input.

"cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space" Man I wish this was true but it definitely isn't in anyplace that gets significantly cold. Heat pumps are super super efficient at cooling but they get less efficient at heating the colder it gets. Humans and appliances create a pretty negligible amount of heat.

I also point out that Phoenix's "summer" last longer than Berlin's winter:

https://weatherspark.com/y/75981/Average-Weather-in-Berlin-G...

https://weatherspark.com/y/2460/Average-Weather-in-Phoenix-A...

It is true that heat is easier to generate. Berlin is considered mild while Phoenix is considered very hot. They just happen to have the same temperature deltas. On the whole, the world spends many, many times more energy heating living spaces than cooling them. The coldest cities people live in just have much larger room temperature deltas than the hottest.

A lot of what you said is intuitively/directionally correct, but misses a lot of important physics related to heat transfer in buildings and operational questions of space heating equipment.

This is your most accurate/relevant point:

> All of this is ignoring the fact that it’s easy to create a tiny personal heated environment around an individual (it’s called a woolly jumper).

Whereas this is plainly wrong:

> It’s much easier, and consumes less additional energy, to heat an occupied space, than to cool it.

And then the following is correct but the marginal reduction in load is minimal except in relatively crowded spaces (or spaces with very high equipment power densities):

> Thanks to the fact that your average human produces 80W of heat just to stay alive.

The truth is it is generally easier to cool not heat when you take into account the necessary energy input to achieve the desired action on the psychrometric chart, assuming by “ease” you mean energy (or emissions) used, given that you are operating over a large volume of air - which does align with your point about the jumper to be fair!

Generally speaking, an A/C uses approx. 1 unit of electricity for every 3 units of cooling that it produces since it uses heat transfer rather than heat generation (simplified ELI5). It is only spending energy to move heat, not make it. On the other hand, a boiler or furnace or resistance heat system generally uses around 1 unit of input energy for every 0.8-0.9 units of heating energy produced. Heat pumps achieve similar to coefficients of performance as A/Cs, because they are effectively just A/Cs operating in reverse.

Your point about a jumper is great, but there are local cooling strategies as well (tho not as effective), eg using a fan or an adiabatic cooling device (eg a mister in a hot dry climate).

> So cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space.

Once you move to cost, it now also depends on your fuel prices, not just your demand and system type. For instance, in America, nat gas is so cheap, that even with its inefficiencies relative to a heat pump, if electricity is expensive heating might still be cheaper than cooling per unit of thermal demand (this is true for instance in MA, since electricity is often 3x the price of NG). On the other hand, if elec is less than 3x the cost of nat gas, then cooling is probably cheaper than heating per unit of demand, assuming you use natural gas for your heating system.

Cooling takes less energy per BTU moved vs heating. In AC/heat pumps that's represented by SEER rating for cooling and HSPF rating for heating (heat pumps). Modern ACs have SEER ratings for 20+ and HSPF ratings for 8+. What it means is that on average, spending 1 BTU equivalent of electrical energy cools down the house by 20 BTU. Similarly for heat pump it means spending 1 BTU of electricity heats up the house by 8 BTU. Electric resistive heating is equivalent of HSPF 1.

Also in sunny climates it's easy to use solar energy for cooling making it carbon net-zero. Cold places typically burn natural gas for heating, it's much harder to make heating carbon net-zero.

Solar power works very well in summer and can be used for cooling.

This is a good point that I had not considered, and I will add a few additional thoughts:

* In cold weather, solar heat gain can work in your favor as well. Much of the effect will depend on the orientation, shading, and properties of your windows, though. On the other hand, as another commenter pointed out, more sun in southern, cooling-dominated climate can also mean more, cheaper electricity.

* If you have a heat pump water heater, it will actually _cool_ your space significantly. The heat is transferred from your home to your water and mostly goes down the drain with it.

* At 65F (18.3C), most people I know would already be wearing a jumper/sweater. That's why I chose a lower target temperature for Berlin. The best source I could find[1] indicates that in November-December of 2022 (in the context of rising energy prices due to Russia's war with Ukraine), Germans actually kept their houses at 19.4C, on average.

* Maybe I'm moving the goalposts a bit, but I chose Berlin mostly because the numbers worked out conveniently. As someone who grew up in the American upper midwest, I wouldn't consider Berlin to be particularly cold. Phoenix, on the other hand, is the hottest city in the country and its summers are some of the hottest in the world. In general, the hottest cities are still closer to what we'd consider room temperature than the coldest are.

[1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/80-percent-german-house... (original report is on German)

> So cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space

Nope. That's precisely wrong. Tl;dr heating normally uses less efficient technology than cooling and has to work across a higher temperature difference.

In Alberta or Minnesota, where the delta in the winter can be as high as 60 degrees centigrade (-40 outside, +20 inside) but only 20 degrees centigrade at most in the summer (+45 outside, +25 inside), heating is far more costly. Even accounting for waste heat from appliances. Most heating is done with furnaces, not heat pumps. Air conditioners are heat pumps and are 3x as efficient as a furnace. There are also less energy intensive cooling methods - shading, fans, swamp coolers - commonly used in the developing world and continental Europe.

On the other hand in a place with warm winters and hot summers, such as south east Asia, obviously cooling is more expensive because heating is unnecessary.

The highest temperature ever recorded is around 60 degrees centrigrade, a mere 23 degrees above the human body. The low temperature record is like -90, 127 degrees below body temperature. Needing to heat large deltas is way more common than needing to cool high deltas. And cooling is done with heat pumps, which are more efficient than the technologies used most commonly for heating (resistive or combustion).

> when cooling a space, you have to cool everything, regardless of if it’ll impact the comfort of the occupants.

Keep the house at 25 degrees centigrade and run a ceiling fan. 23 if you're a multi-millionaire. You'll be far more comfortable outdoors if your house is closer to the outside temperature. The North American need to have sub-arctic temperatures in every air conditioned space in the summertime is bizarre (don't even get me started on ice water).